A Survey of Cloud Gaming Platforms: Architectural Design and Performance Evaluation of Major Providers

Cloud gaming, also known as gaming-as-a-service, is a transformative technology that leverages cloud infrastructure to deliver high-quality gaming experiences by streaming games from remote servers to various devices. This approach eliminates the need for powerful local hardware, making gaming more accessible and cost-effective. Cloud gaming architectures vary significantly across different companies, each leveraging unique technologies and infrastructure to deliver seamless gaming ex- periences. Microsoft’s Xbox Cloud Gaming (formerly Project xCloud) utilizes custom blade servers hosted in Azure data centers to stream Xbox games to various devices, emphasizing low latency and high availability NVIDIA’s GeForce NOW transforms local devices into high-performance gaming PCs by streaming games from NVIDIA’s data centers, using advanced video en- coding and adaptive bitrate streaming to optimize performance. Google Stadia, built on Debian Linux and Vulkan API, streams games from Google’s data centers, offering features like 4K res- olution and integration with YouTube for enhanced interactivity. Sony’s PlayStation Now, integrated into the PlayStation Plus service, uses custom servers to stream a wide range of PlayStation games, focusing on delivering console-quality experiences across multiple devices. This paper provides a comparison of the different architectures used by various companies.